Isaiah chapter 53, the second part of verse
1.
To whom hath the arm of the Lord
been revealed?
The arm of the Lord.
We are at this time seeking the answer
to that question.
To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed?
Understanding that that is a symbolic phrase, the
arm of the Lord, implying the Lord's support,
the Lord's cooperation, the Lord's strength, the Lord
himself standing by in favor with all his
might.
We believe that within this chapter, which really
begins at verse 13 of what is marked
chapter 52, and beneath the main story
that is drawn in such vivid lines, there
are to be found those spiritual thoughts of
God which are the answer to the inquiry,
those thoughts which are divine laws, divine principles,
upon which the arm of the Lord is
revealed.
These are of abiding and universal application, a
whole matter of the committing of himself to
any person or persons, to any work or
service, the showing of his arm.
So we continue our investigation to discover what
these divine thoughts are.
There are certain things which lie clearly upon
the surface, as you have the record before
you.
First of all, one thing that is very
apparent is the main difference between the attitude
of man and the attitude of God to
this suffering servant of the Lord.
Those two attitudes are very clearly defined, very
easily marked, and represent two entirely different realms,
the attitude of God and the attitude of
man.
As to the attitude of man or man's
judgment concerning this one, my servant, you find
that falls into two parts.
Firstly, that of the Gentiles, and secondly, that
of Israel.
The attitude or the judgment of the Gentiles
on hearing the report and receiving the description
is found in those last verses of chapter
52, like as many as were starned at
thee.
His visage was so marred more than any
man, his form more than the sons of
men.
So shall he startle, well that is the
word, not sprinkle, startle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths at him, for
that which had not been told them shall
they see, and that which they had not
heard shall they consider.
The report mentioned in the next verse, first
of chapter 53, is so marked, the report
of him which had gone forth, hath called
the nations and the kings to be startled.
They shut their mouths in a horrified consternation.
The description produces this attitude of dumb
amazement and incredulity.
Incredulity, who hath received the report?
Not these.
Incredulity.
This could never be the servant of the
Lord.
Such an one, such a one.
Tell us that that is the servant of
Jehovah.
Tell us that that is the redeemer of
mankind.
Tell us such a creature stands within the
pain of divine approval.
Never.
They shut their mouths.
Their jaws are fixed.
The Gentile reaction and judgment.
And then into the long passage of the
chapter, Israel's reaction is described.
What is Israel's judgment on receiving the report,
the record, the story, the description?
Well, how did Israel look upon him?
Root out of a dry ground.
Nothing beautiful about that.
Nothing attractive about that.
Something you might find in the way and
kick it out of your path.
That's the value.
That's the estimate of it.
Despise and reject.
That's Israel's judgment.
Man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.
Tell us that's the Messiah.
Tell us that's the anointed of the Lord.
Tell us that's the servant of Jehovah.
Tell us that's the redeemer of Israel.
No.
Never.
Thousand times never was as one from whom
men hid their face.
He is despised.
We esteemed him not.
You can so easily visualize with mental pictures
these gestures and attitudes and looks upon these
faces.
We did esteem him smitten of God.
Smitten of God.
That's the meaning of his cross.
He deserved it.
God has smitten him.
He deserved it.
Smitten of God and afflicted.
God has put upon him the judgment which
he deserved.
And smitten of God and afflicted.
They made his grave with the wicked.
What that means I don't know unless, unless
that is what would have happened had Joseph
of Arimathea not intervened and begged his body
and Pilate he would have been flung into
the grave with the other malefactors, with the
wicked.
That was at any rate the attitude of
Israel.
The judgment of Israel.
But that's only broad outline.
His whole career is brought before us.
His birth.
His birth is described as a root out
of dry ground.
In a sense a very true description.
The seed of David seemed to have become
very dry.
And yet they are so discrediting him in
this way.
There is no beauty that we should desire
him when we see him.
There is no verdant, glorious splendor perceptible in
his coming into this world.
Who is he after all?
Where did he come from?
Of course we know more.
But you must remember that Matthew and Luke
wrote their records of his birth long years
after he had gone to glory.
They had set themselves with pains to trace
his ancestry.
And to find out all these things about
his birth.
And we have them in their gospel narratives.
But these were not common knowledge in Israel.
Look and see a prophet does not come
out of Galilee they say.
Can any good thing come out of Galilee?
No.
There was no carry over.
Matthew, I am working towards something.
This whole matter of to whom the arm
of the Lord is revealed.
So follow closely.
There was no carry over of human glories
and grandeur into this life naturally.
He was born with no human prestige in
his life.
Well in the description here there are more
negative things than positive.
There are more handicaps than advantages.
He had no fault.
He had no comeliness.
He had no beauty that we should desire
him.
Let's not attempt mental pictures of the appearance
of the Lord Jesus.
But this is just how they looked at
him.
He had a heritage of woes.
A man of sorrows.
And acquainted with grief.
In his life linked with the tragedies.
The tragedies of human inheritance and experience.
Sorrows.
Griefs.
And woes.
That's how they viewed him.
This was man's judgment.
Tell us that that man is Jehovah's anointed
and our Messiah.
Tell us that that is the servant of
Jehovah.
Never.
All that puts him completely out of court.
There is not one positive factor about him
that sets him in the rightful position of
a chosen and anointed servant of the Lord,
Redeemer and Messiah.
His death.
Well what full description there is.
He was oppressed.
Yet he humbled himself and opened not his
mouth.
The lamb that is led to the slaughter
and of the sheep that before her shearers
is done, yea, he opened not his mouth.
Simple description is something for the slaughter.
Slaughter.
Horrible word.
Sheep and lamb for the slaughter.
Smitten of God.
That was their interpretation of the cross.
Oppressed and his judgment taken away.
Judgment taken away.
Well that's their view.
That's their view.
The fact was the judgment was being exercised
by him over them all at that time.
But their view was his judgment is rightly
taken away.
All his franchise is removed.
All his rights are eliminated.
And deservedly so.
Cut off.
Cut off out of the land of the
living.
God has cut him off.
God has done it.
This is the judgment of Israel, the judgment
of man.
Man's judgment is entirely based upon objective considerations.
Without any inside knowledge.
That's what it amounts to.
Let me repeat that.
Man's judgment of divine things and divine persons
and divine works is based entirely upon objective
considerations without any knowledge of inward reality.
Now when we take these reactions all together
we find ourselves in the presence of the
deep ways of God as he moves toward
revealing his arm.
How deep are his ways.
How far is he finding out.
How mysterious.
But oh how sparkling.
When you begin to recognize.
I say put all this together.
This interpretation and judgment of the human mind.
The mind of this world about this one
who we know to be the divine son
of God.
The redeemer of men.
Put them all together.
Here we are right in the presence of
these profound ways of God as he is
moving, mark you, moving steadily.
Moving with determination.
Moving resolutely toward the point of revealing his
arm.
Tremendous that this should be his way.
You see two questions arise here.
Why this universal reaction of the world of
men to this servant of Jehovah.
Why?
That's of course an astonishing thing from our
standpoint.
An amazing thing that such judgments and reactions
should be possible on the part of men
universally.
But there they are.
There they are.
And we know that they were a fact.
And what is more we know that they
are still a fact.
The mind of this world sees nothing desirable
in this crucified one.
Leave that.
But we say why this universal reaction and
judgment of the servant of Jehovah.
And the other question which perhaps goes even
nearer to the heart and root of the
whole matter.
Why this deliberate method of God making this
reaction on the part of man inevitable.
Strange things.
Oh it seems as though God has gone
out of his way to produce such a
reaction from men.
Why didn't God give one altogether lovely that
all could appreciate.
One who would stand in the position of
acceptance with all men at first sight.
Why did not he to the world bring
him in, in state, in grandeur and glory.
Why was he not from the beginning embellished
with all the signs of heaven for all
men to see.
Why did God, it would seem, deliberately take
a line that would produce reactions of this
kind.
They would be inevitable.
Draw this picture.
This picture.
Visage marred more than any man.
Distorted more than the sons of men.
All those things.
Draw that picture and then hold it up
and say to the world that's your redeemer.
It would seem that God has deliberately taken
a course to offend.
To scandalize.
To produce this very thing.
And so he did.
But why?
Oh we're getting near.
Now very near to the real point.
You see man's standard of values is an
entirely false one.
And God knows it.
It is utterly, utterly.
Because it is the result of man's pride.
It's offended pride you know.
Isn't it?
It's offended pride.
Tell us that we've got to come down
to that.
To that level.
We've got to accept that for our salvation.
That we have got to condescend to that
level.
No.
Never.
It's contrary to human nature.
Yes it is.
Because human nature is what it is.
An utterly false standard of values produced by
man's pride.
So the suffering servant is an affront.
An affront to human pride.
An affront and an offense and a scandal
to man's standard of things.
For this very reason neither Jew nor Gentile
would receive the report.
Pride would not allow it.
We've found when I survey the wonders I
pour contempt on all my pride.
That ought to be the effect of the
cross.
No.
For them.
For the world.
For man being what he is.
His pride will not accept that.
And therefore he is despised.
Rejected.
No beauty that we should desire in him.
The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is
the deep undercutting of false glory.
It goes right to the very taproot of
man's self-esteem.
Self-importance of man's pride.
It goes right to the very root of
life that is based upon man's own prestige
and values.
Even though Mark you, even though he may,
from this world's standpoint and according to this
world's standards, be something and have something.
By birth.
Or by acquisition.
By his brains or his cleverness.
By his hard work, his study.
He may have acquired some position.
Some glory.
Some success.
Some prestige.
If you base your life upon anything like
that.
Base your life before God on anything like
that.
You are numbered with those here who are
in absolute contradiction to the divine standard of
values.
The fact is, dear friends, that when we
come to the cross, our very rightful glories
from this world's standpoint are going to be
undercut.
They are going to be emptied out.
Poured down the drain.
Look at Saul of Passos.
Had he something to glory in?
He tells us.
Oh, he tells us.
Of all his advantages, by ancestry, by birth,
and by upbringing, and by training, and by
acquisition, and by success, he climbed to the
top of the ladder.
Or did he think of it when he
came into the presence of the cross of
the Lord Jesus?
Refuge.
For him life was not based upon that.
And he knew quite well.
He knew quite well that that was out
of the divine court as a basis of
any standing with God.
Believe me.
If you are coming into the fellowship of
God's servant and God's son in heart, in
spirit, in truth, that's the way all your
own natural values will go.
And you are destined to come to a
place where anything that you have from behind,
long ago, before your birth, or in birth,
or since your birth, anything that you might
glory in, will become nothing to you.
You will see that that thing always contains
a threat, a threat to your spiritual life,
if you are not very careful.
I'm thinking about basing life before God upon
that sort of thing.
I'm not saying that there are no values
in those things, but if you begin to
bring those into the presence of God, and
begin to calculate with them, and make something
of them, very well.
You see where you are?
Whose company you are in, you do not
come into account with God.
God has discredited all human pride.
In the cross of the Lord Jesus he
has utterly undercut all man's glory.
That picture described here, painted here, of this
suffering servant of Jehovah, in all the agony,
in all the distortion, in all that is
so terrible, is a portrait of what sin
does in the sight of God.
Of what pride does in the eyes of
God.
That's how God views man.
After all, these people who would not receive
the report because of pride, are the people
who are described in their very image in
the sight of God by that man hanging
on the cross.
He bought our sins, our iniquities, our transgressions,
all that we are was put on him,
and that's how we are in God's sight.
He was not brought there into that condition
because it was true of him, but because
it was true of us.
That's the whole argument of the chapter, isn't
it?
How man sees it, and how God sees
it.
Oh, what a difference.
But, listen again.
Not only life based upon things that in
their own realm are legitimate and true of
merits and values, either inherited or acquired, but
mark you, life based upon assumed importance.
This may be more subtle and this certainly
is more terrible when a person who has
no natural rights to be anything begins to
assume that they are something, to display some
self-importance.
Oh, this is even more horrible with God.
No right, whatever, and yet taking position and
stuttering about in the very house of God
and contrary to the spirit of this servant
of the Lord, letting their voice be heard,
he shall not cry nor lift up his
voice.
Nothing about him that is assertive, loud, noisy,
and yet people can assume positions even in
the very house of God which make them
noisy and self-assertive, bringing attention to themselves,
and assume something.
The psalmist says, Thou desirest truth in the
inward parts.
What is true of us after all?
What is true of you?
What is true of me before God?
Before God.
And after all, it's before God, isn't it?
That things are weighed rightly.
The apostle said, Love is not, what a
phrase, what a phrase, tucked up, full of
air.
That's all there is.
Love is not tucked up.
There's no inflation of man in the presence
of God.
We come into the presence of God, we
become terribly deflated.
It always was so.
When I saw him, I fell on my
face.
Well, see, this is man's standard of values
and God's in contrast.
What a difference.
This disfigured, marred servant is God's way of
showing us what we are in his sight.
Love is not tucked up.
There's no inflation of man in the presence
of God.
We come into the presence of God, we
become terribly deflated.
It always was so.
When I saw him, I fell on my
face.
Well, see, this is man's standard of values
and God's in contrast.
What a difference.
This disfigured, marred servant is God's way of
showing us what we are in his sight.
Oh, there's something deep, deep in the ways
of God.
Here I say we are in the presence
of the deep ways of God.
For man has ever, since the day of
the fall, sought to draw attention to himself,
sought to draw things to himself, sought to
be something in himself, sought to have glory
for himself.
That was the heart of the whole thing.
Pride, pride.
It brought Satan from his highest state and
it brought man from his highest state.
A seeking of a glory for himself.
God has repudiated the whole thing in the
cross of the Lord Jesus to whom is
the arm of the Lord revealed, not to
anybody who has any of that about him
or about her.
That's the answer.
Here are your principles of divine committal.
To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed?
To this man will I look, even to
him who is of a broken and a
contrite spirit.
God beholdeth the proud of power.
Pride is an abomination unto God.
I quote the scripture.
See, the cross of the Lord Jesus on
the one side is the undercutting of all
our pride, all our self-importance, of life
based upon a false standard of values.
But on the other side, the cross is
the uncovering of that which is God's standard
of values.
What is it?
Now, you know very well that the letter
to the Philippians, a great letter of the
cross, isn't it?
A great letter of the cross because the
second chapter of that letter is the most
perfect compliment to Isaiah 53.
I'm not going to read it, but you
know it.
But look, listen, how this part of the
letter begins.
If there is therefore any exaltation in Christ,
if any consolation of love, if any fellowship
of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and
compassions, make full my joy that ye be
of the same mind, having the same love,
being of one accord, of one mind, of
one mind, doing nothing through faction or
through vainglory, but in lowliness of mind, each
counting other better than himself.
What a challenge.
Wouldn't that undercut all our criticism, even of
those whom we feel we've got something, in
whom we've got something to criticize?
Pointing out their faults and calling them by
this name and that, each esteeming the other
as himself.
That brother, that sister, may have some very
glaring faults, but God only knows.
I may have very much worse.
Each counting other better than himself, not looking
each of you to his own things, but
each of you also to the things of
others.
This word mind is cropping up, isn't it?
Cropping up.
This mind, have this mind in you, which
was also in Christ Jesus, who existing in
the form of God counted not the being
on an equality with God as a thing
to be held on to, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a bond slave.
He made in the likeness of men, being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself, becoming obedient even unto death.
Yea, the death.
This is the compliment, I said, of Isaiah
53.
What follows immediately is the compliment of the
end of Isaiah 52, My servant shall be
very high, wherefore God hath highly exalted him,
given him the name which is out of
God every name.
What is the basis of the arm of
the Lord being revealed?
To whom?
To these.
Described in this second chapter, the letter to
the Philippians.
If you'd like to go into the third
chapter, you have all those things in which
man glories, of which man takes account, upon
which man builds, as mentioned by Paul as
to his past life.
But God did not look toward him in
this way of approval and blessing to stand
by that man.
He met him and laid him low in
the dust and broke him and shattered him
and then afterward lifted him up.
You see the principle?
It's all so clear.
The chief evil with God is pride.
The chief virtue with God is meekness.
Always it's like this.
So this is but a little further look
into this great chapter in Isaiah to discover
on what ground the arm of the Lord
will be revealed.
To find the answer to the question to
whom?
To whom?
And to those like him.
Of this mind.
Of this mind that was in Christ.
My dear friends, you and I are more
and more amazed, more and more amazed when
we think of this servant of the Lord
knowing beforehand what he was going through, what
it was going to mean and to be
what he was going to experience and suffer
being willing to take that course in order
to redeem us from our pride.
The iniquity of our pride.
You know that word iniquity?
You know that the root of that word
iniquity in the Hebrew means alliance with Satan?
Yes, there you are.
To deliver us from that inward alliance with
Satan in his pride the servant of the
Lord went down to the depths of degradation.
Here we see what pride is in God's
mind.
A man's false, utterly false standard of death.
Surely there opens up to our eyes the
infinite value of self-emptiness, of having no
confidence in the flesh, of weakness in that
realm, of the meek and the quiet spirit
which is our great pride, Peter says, in
the sight of God.
I leave that with you.
We want the arm of the Lord for
us and not against us.
We want its girding, its support, its strength
in our lives, in our fellowships, our assembly
and our service.
This is the ground.
Nothing that is a contradiction to this will
ever find that hand lifted up on our
behalf.
He'll leave us.
He'll leave us to get on with it
and to wallow in the mire of our
own creating until at the cross we pour
contempt on all our pride and are crucified
to all the world and all the world
is crucified to us and most particularly the
world of our own heart.
We pray.